“Let’s see” – Arteta issues fitness update ahead of Liverpool visit

Mikel Arteta says Arsenal will do everything they can to get key players fit for Sunday’s clash with Liverpool although the evidence suggests he’s facing an uphill battle on most fronts.

Sky Sports reported this afternoon that Bukayo Saka, Jurrien Timber and Riccardo Calafiori were all absent from today’s training session while long-term absentees Martin Odegaard, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Kieran Tierney also sat things out.

With William Saliba suspended following last weekend’s red card against Bournemouth, the Gunners will almost certainly have to reshuffle their pack for the visit of the league leaders.

Facing the press this afternoon, the first question posed was about the availability of Saka, Timber and Calafiori. Arteta replied: “We’re going to do our very best to somehow have them available, but obviously it’s very, very uncertain.”

Reports in Italy have claimed that Calafiori has avoided a serious injury but still tweaked medial ligaments in his right knee during Tuesday’s Champions League win over Shakhtar Donetsk. Arteta says the player, who was concerned about a separate knee issue a couple of weeks ago, is still undergoing tests.

“He needs some more tests. Yesterday, he had some, today he’s going to have some more,” confirmed the boss. 

“And from there we will know. Because last time as well we thought it was really bad. And then he ended up playing two days after or three. So let’s see, let’s see how it is.”

He did add that the Italy international may not be so lucky this time around. As for Saka, injured on international duty with England, he’s variously been close to a return, ruled out and now potentially back in contention, all in the space of a few days. It sounds like it’s a case of ‘watch this space’.

“He’s done a bit of training on the grass. How far we can get him to Sunday, that’s a different question. We have another day, which is the good thing that this week had an extra day, but we’ll see.”

On Timber, who hasn’t been included in a provisional squad for the Netherlands’ upcoming fixtures, he added: “It’s the first session that he could have some involvement. He’s been out for a while. We expected him to be further back than where he is at the moment, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

Arteta does have a number of options when it comes to finding a partner for Gabriel Magalhaes. Ben White could be shifted to centre-back with Thomas Partey filling in at right-back. Or he could trust Jakub Kiwior and hand a start to either Myles Lewis-Skelly or Oleksandr Zinchenko at left-back.

“We have different options, players that have already played before,” said Arteta. “It’s true that that partnership [with Gabriel] has been very stable, you said he’s played every single moment, but he’s not available. We have to find a different solution which is something that as a team we need to be good at as well.

“Obviously, we’ve had so much going on [injury-wise], especially in the backline in the first few months of the season. We’ve had to adapt to that. That’s why we have some versatile players and they’ve been really, really helpful. Ideally, we would have other options as well and more consistency. But that’s the situation that we have at the moment.”